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SOFT BOXING BY OLIVER SUNDQVIST AND FREDERIK NYSTRUP-LARSEN

SOFT BOXING

SIDE GALLERY
BARCELONA
23RD FEB 2023 - 20TH MAR 2023

Side Gallery presents "Soft Boxing", by the Danish artistic duo Frederik Nystrup-Larsen (b.1992 Copenhagen) & Oliver Sundqvist (b.1991 Copenhagen). The exhibition is the pairs’ first solo show at Side Gallery, and acts as a continuation of their series rendered as a sculptural legacy of Tai Chi’s aesthetic movements. Ten new luminous sculptures composed of stainless steel structures, a relief of acrylic knit, and fluorescent LED pipes, seek to illustrate the immemorial Chinese martial art, translating the flowing movements of the body and mind into material objects.

Frederik Nystrup-Larsen and, Oliver Sundqvist’s proven partnership continuously questions the current state of contemporary design. Over the last few years they have place a continued focus on creating unique and collectible objects, with the central theme as longevity. The pair seek to ignite a feeling of responsibility in people through the creations of thoughtful and sustainable pieces. A lot of their work questions the surrounding world. Inspired by characters and movements that challenge established understandings of structures within this world.


Through a sequence of 10 lamps, the Danish duo, explore the gradual transition of flowing movement. Breath in, breath out. Zen. Taking us to the ultimate source or the limit of reality, the series channels energy from the mind, through the body, and translates it into materiality. Reflecting the charm of Tai Chi and the movement’s fundamental Yin/Yang-duality, each sculpture is finely composed of a skeleton of bent steel, determining the object’s biomorphic form – reviving the 1950s idiom of organic design –, stretched by a seamless coat acrylic-knit, and illuminated by a heart of LED piping within. Each piece signifies a unique gesture or command, creating 10 displacements of form within the transference, 10 unique variations of the ritual. Some dangle, others balance on fragile legs, resembling a praying mantis.

Light, -immaterial and, weightless– has the potential to carry evocative power. Characterised by an ethereal luminosity, the sculptures provide a softened, indirect light, to create an ambience. The delicate, fibrous sleeves disguise the fluorescent LED tubes within, and soften their harsh glow, transforming the electric light back to the light of our origin – the natural light from the sun and moon – and this is the light that will continue to fill our rooms.

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